Juilliard Orchestra Edo De Waart , Conductor
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Saturday Evening, September 23, 2017, at 7:30 The Juilliard School presents Juilliard Orchestra Edo de Waart , Conductor JOHANNES BRAHMS (1833 –97) Concerto in D major for Violin and Orchestra, Op. 77 (1878) Allegro non troppo Adagio Allegro giocoso, ma non troppo vivace—Poco più presto Intermission MICHAEL IPPOLITO (b. 1985) Nocturne (2011) RICHARD STRAUSS (1864 –1949) Der Rosenkavalier Suite (1909 –10, rev. 1944) Performance time: approximately 1 hour and 40 minutes, including one intermission The taking of photographs and the use of recording equipment are not permitted in this auditorium. Information regarding gifts to the school may be obtained from the Juilliard School Development Office, 60 Lincoln Center Plaza, New York, NY 10023-6588; (212) 799-5000, ext. 278 (juilliard.edu/giving). Alice Tully Hall Please make certain that all electronic devices are turned off during the performance. Notes on the Program not as a literal repetition but rather as a rhapsodizing memory of the melody. In the by James M. Keller finale, which proved the most immediately popular with early audiences, Sarasate Concerto in D major for Violin and would have found some of the crackling Orchestra, Op. 77 “Gypsy spirit” that was one of his particu - JOHANNES BRAHMS lar specialties. Born May 7, 1833, in Hamburg, Germany Died April 3, 1897, in Vienna, Austria Brahms did some of his best work during his summer vacations, which he usually Johannes Brahms was not a violinist him - spent at some bucolic getaway in the self, but as a pianist he had worked as an Austrian countryside. The summer of accompanist to violinists since the earliest 1878—the summer of the Violin Concerto— years of his career. One of his closest found him in Pörtschach, on the north friends was Joseph Joachim, whose pres - shore of the Wörthersee in the southern ence looms large in the saga of Brahms’ Austrian province of Carinthia. When he Violin Concerto. The composer consulted wrote his Second Symphony there the with him closely while writing the piece summer before, he had remarked that and there is no question that Joachim’s beautiful melodies so littered the land - input helped shape the final state of the scape that one merely had to scoop them violin part, as well as the work’s orchestra - up. Listeners today are likely to think that tion overall. Brahms also sought the advice he scooped up quite a few for his Violin of two other eminent violinists—Pablo de Concerto, too, but early listeners weren’t Sarasate and Émile Sauret—but found their so sure. Critics were at best cool and at input of far lesser consequence. Sarasate worst savage. When it was presented by famously refused to play the piece, object - the Berlin Conservatory Orchestra, one ing to the long oboe solo that opens the newspaper complained that students second movement: “Do you think me so should not be subjected to such “trash,” devoid of taste that I would stand there in and Joseph Hellmesberger Sr., who as one front of the orchestra, violin in hand, but of Vienna’s leading violinists had much like a listener, while the oboe plays the Brahmsian experience, dismissed it as “a only melody in the entire work?” It is hard concerto not for, but against the violin” (or not to think that Joachim’s influence also maybe that bon mot came from conductor extended to introducing Brahms to Bruch’s Hans von Bülow). Brahms was a bit dis - celebrated First Violin Concerto, which so couraged by the response and, to the strikingly prefigures passages in Brahms’ regret of posterity, fed to the flames the concerto that many music lovers assume draft he had already completed for his that Bruch was copying Brahms. In fact, Violin Concerto No. 2. We can only mourn the influence flowed in the other direction. what must have been lost. The first movement admittedly poses Nocturne conceptual challenges, being at once vir - MICHAEL IPPOLITO tu osic and largely lyrical, its materials Born January 28, 1985, in Tampa, Florida mounting up with a sense of serene grandeur. In the slow movement (to which Michael Ippolito serves as assistant pro - Sarasate protested), the violin’s music fessor of composition at Texas State grows organically out of the oboe’s theme, University. He is a product of Juilliard, where he studied composition with John Corigliano, The composer has provided this comment and of the Cincinnati College-Conservatory about Nocturne : of Music, where his teachers included Joel Hoffman and Michael Fiday. He was a My Nocturne was originally inspired by composer fellow at the Aspen Music Joan Miró’s 1940 painting of the same Festival and the Cultivate program at the name. I was first drawn to the pure visual Copland House in 2012. From 2004 to appeal of Miró’s fantastical figures and 2011 he was a participating composer and swirling lines, but I was also intrigued by performer in MusicX, a new-music festival the idea of a “nocturne” with so much in Cincinnati and Switzerland, where he energy and whimsy. As I thought about worked as general manager from 2008 the tension between the title and the through 2011. He has also participated in image, the other approaches to the noc - the Upbeat Hvar International Summer turne came to my mind—from the School in Croatia, the Yiddish Summer Whistler paintings and the dreamy world Weimar in Germany, and the Oregon Bach of Chopin and Field that inspired him, to Festival’s Composers Symposium. the colorful and diverse Debussy pieces, to the creaking and sliding “night music” His works have earned him the Charles of Bartók. In the end my piece is about Ives Scholarship from the American Academy the different connotations of the title as of Arts and Letters, the Palmer Dixon Prize much as it is about an imagined noctur - from Juilliard, and multiple awards from nal scene. ASCAP. His wind ensemble work West of the Sun was recognized with an honorable Nocturne is in three large sections. The mention in the 2014 Frederick Fennell Prize opening evokes a hazy world, with allu - competition, and his String Quartet No. 3, sions to familiar nocturnal imagery floating Songlines , was runner-up in the Apollo in and out of focus. The middle section is Chamber Players Commissioning Compe - a wild scherzo inspired by Miró’s bizarre tition. Commissions have come his way nocturne. At the end the music from the from organizations including the ensem - opening section returns, with a brief nod ble 20/21 in Cologne, the University of to Chopin before the music evaporates Georgia Wind Ensemble, and the New to nothing. York Choreographic Institute. Recent pro - jects include a string quartet for the Altius Der Rosenkavalier Suite Quartet (commissioned by Chamber Music RICHARD STRAUSS America) and a work for the Truman State Born June 11, 1864, in Munich, Germany University Wind Ensemble. His symphonic Died September 8, 1949, in Garmisch- compositions have been performed by the Partenkirchen, Germany Chicago Symphony, Milwaukee Symphony, Cabrillo Festival Orchestra, Albany Sym - The fifth of Richard Strauss’ operas, Der phony, and Juilliard Orchestra. Rosenkavalier instantly captured the hearts of opera-goers when it was unveiled in He originally composed Nocturne in 2010 1911. At the center of the plot, set in as a chamber piece for flute, violin, and mid- 18th-century Vienna, we find the piano. He completed the version for Marschallin, a princess who, in the absence orchestra the following year, and it was of her husband (a military man of some premiered in February 2012, with Jeffrey eminence), is having an affair with Octavian, Milarsky conducting the Juilliard Orchestra. an attractive young count. The Marschallin’s boorish cousin, Baron Ochs, hopes to young fel low—surely that is the ne plus ensnare Sophie, the lovely daughter of a ultra of simplicity.” nouveau riche gentleman with access to well-born circles. In an act of courtship, The premiere of Der Rosenkavalier was Octavian (disguised as a maid) is sent to one of the great events of operatic history. offer Sophie a silver rose on behalf of Many critics were hostile, but the audience Baron Ochs. But, when Octavian arrives to adored it, calling the performers back to present the rose, he and Sophie fall in love the stage for ten curtain calls after the sec - with each other. After various complica - ond act and 20 after the third. Strauss tions, the ardor of youth wins out. Ochs remained ever fond of it, partly on aes - withdraws his bid for Sophie, realizing how thetic grounds and partly because his roy - ridiculously he has been behaving, and, alty payments earned him a fortune. The with enormous dignity and insight, the music was pressed into all manner of use Marschallin accepts that young Octavian is through arrangements and transcriptions. better suited to love Sophie than a woman The first orchestral suite appeared in 1911, of her own advancing years. directly on the heels of the premiere, and quite a few others were released in ensu - Strauss was worried that his score for Der ing decades. The Rosenkavalier Suite played Rosenkavalier , brimful as it is with com - here was made by an unidentified arranger plex motivic interconnections (much in in 1944. It is widely held to be (at least in the spirit of his symphonic poems), might large part) the work of the conductor Artur prove elusive to theatergoers. His libret - Rodz inski. Strauss approved this arrange - tist, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, offered ment ´and it was published in 1945 by the reassurance: “Its blending of the gro - firm of Boosey and Hawkes. tesque with the lyrical will to a great extent correspond with your artistic indi - James M.